Iets lekkers met een bite!

Oatmeal cookies may be just as famous as the legendary chocolate chip, but they’re not in the Netherlands. We use oatmeal to make porridge, and that’s about it. That is why I wanted to try a little baking with oatmeal myself, and naturally I started with cookies. Like I wrote in one of my previous posts, I am almost religiously in favor of crunchy cookies: This led me to this recipe on SmittenKitchen, a deliciously inspiring baking blog. I made some minor changes, converted the volume amounts to SI units and tried & tested a few variations. I hope you like them, and that you will share your own variations in the comments below!

Ingredients:

– 1 cup / 128 g all-purpose flour

– 1 teaspoon baking powder

– 1/4 teaspoon salt

– 1 3/4 sticks / 200 g butter (slightly softened)

– 1 cup / 200 g sugar

– 1/4 cup packed / 50 g light brown sugar

– 1 large egg

– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

– 2 1/2 cups / 225 g old-fashioned rolled oats

– 6 ounces / 170 g white chocolate, chopped

– + 1/2 cup / 70 g hazelnuts

You can play around with the addition of chocolate and nuts. I have tried these two varieties and my friends and family loved them.

Variety 1:

1/2 cup / 75 g white chocolate

+ 1/2 cup / 70 g toasted hazelnuts

+ 70 g ‘kandijsuiker’ : These are very crunchy sugar crystals, I’m not sure about a non-Dutch equivalent… Basically, you could use anything sweet and crunchy

Variety 2:

1/2 cup / 70 g toasted almonds

+ 1/4 cup / 70 g peanut butter

+ 50 g ‘kandijsuiker’

These amounts will yield about 24 portions (2 tablespoons of dough each). Bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celcius for 13-16 minutes.

Here in The Netherlands, there’s not an awful lot of variation going when it comes to peanut butter. We have your regular peanut butter sandwich, and we use peanut butter to make an Indonesian peanut (sateh) sauce. That’s about it.

Just thinking about combining peanut butter with sweets like, say, chocolate, makes many shiver — even though they are familiar with Snickers candy bars. But I’m always willing to try new stuff, so when Pinterest inspired me to bake these cookies, I was pretty happy with the result. As you can see in the second picture (in the back), the first batch was thicker than the second, which resulted in a American-style chewy cookie. The second, thinner batch packed more crunch, which I personally prefer.

Ingredients:

133 g flour

1 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

96 g butter

210 g peanut butter

144 g granulated sugar

85 g light brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp milk

vanilla extract/a vanilla pod

75 g chocolate chips (optional)

Bake these babies at 175 degrees Celsius for 10-12 minutes. I baked them in a cupcake/muffin pan so they would get that perfect round shape.